Phantasms

Data is a simple android with simple dreams. He dreams of drinks from the head of a commanding officer, robocidal workers from the early 20th century, and cellular peptide cake (with mint frosting). Reality is much more boring: staring at his cat, installing warp plasma conduits, and stabbing Counselor Troi repeatedly. Can Data ever make his dreams come true? Find out when we put Phantasms into the Mission Log. Just a side note: The Android that has taken over the ship by himself several times, when he is saying he is having nightmares, perhaps take him off of active duty. Yup… I wonder if “Twin Peaks” was already on the air?? I think it was…uggggh…not a creepiness that can transfer over well to the scenery of TNG…. yup another turd and darn it…the “Descent” continues….Lwaxana…arrrggggh… Twin Peaks in its entire original iteration had come and gone by now – even “Fire Walk With Me” was a year old by the time TNG’s last season began. I’ve always hated this episode too. I really don’t like arbitrary world-bendery (see also: Frame of Mind), but this took it to a ridiculous extreme. I get that this is Braga’s wheelhouse, but watching this episode – first run – convinced me that I was SOOOO much more in Moore’s (EDIT: or Piller’s) camp than Braga’s. Give me humanity, or give me politics. Just don’t give me an arbitrary-reality-of-the-week. Dreams-within-dreams, symbolism as the truest reality, uber-“clever” writerly symbolism…forgive the crudeness, but this is all such authorial masturbation. Yes, it’s truly convoluted. And that IS the bad side of complexity. Even modern genre films need to learn the difference. John and Ken can take the most lame episodes and still make a fascinating podcast. I think the problem with “it all happened in their minds” and other hallucination tropes is that it lets the writers get as crazy as they want without having to worry about playing the consequences out on screen. By this point in its history, TNG was getting really bad about the combination of those tropes and the Big Narrative Reset Button that wriggles out from under the corner the writers have put themselves in with, again, no consequence. The show’s habit of raising the stakes insanely high only to fizzle out or cheat the audience really defuses dramatic tension – it’s hard to take it seriously knowing that someone’ll tech the tech and with one bound, Jack will be free. I guess they picked Freud because is something of a pop culture icon, and easily the most regognizable for the layman. Everyone knows the old guy with beard and glasses, where you lie down on a sofa and talk about your mother. If anyone here plans on visiting Vienna, the Freud museum is really quite recommended. It’s almost like walking into a movie set, it’s exactly how you always imagined it. Welcome back, Data! Good to see you’ve returned to duty so quickly. What? Nonsense! No one cares that you stabbed a fellow officer and close friend! Court martial? No way. Don’t worry about it, we considered the matter closed as soon as we realized your actions ultimately saved lives. You have the bridge! Compartmentalized to the extreme!! hahaha, sigh, I think we all know Data would have been scraped in S4 after his “Brothers” incident. Also, Worf and Riker at the turbolift should have been fumbling for the off switch… After listening to the podcast and hearing John and Ken go on about the creepiness of this episode I just have to say, nothing in this episode was overly creepy. Given a movie format and/or a modern Cable network, this could be a really creepy movie. However given the prime time network TV standards of the time, this episode just could not go far enough to make this more than a yawn fest. The sterile nature of the ship doesn’t lend itself to creepy in my opinion. Just looks to damn clean. Yup, this one of the least played from my VHS recorded tapes…lol..this whole season was pretty rarely re-played. Thoughts on this episode: 1. I thought they were miner